By Jim Gilles
Los Angeles, CA (The Hollywood Times) 7/19/22 – Screening at Outfest on Thursday, July 21, 7:15 PM at the Directors Guild of America in West Hollywood is Magnus Gertten’s Nelly & Nadine (Sweden, 2022). Starting from a photo and a box in an attic, director Magnus Gertten’s film tells the unlikely love story of two women who meet on Christmas Eve 1944, in the Ravensbrück concentration camp during World War II. When Nelly’s granddaughter Sylvie Bianchi decides to go through some of her later grandmother’s things, the epic tale unfolds of Nelly and Nadine. The film charts both the life they lived before they met and their incredible journey after. This documentary takes you on a journey of survival, espionage, tragedy and most of all, love.
For many years their relationship was kept a secret and Sylvie’s family never bothered to pay much attention to all the suitcases full of papers and photographs in the attic. In this fascinating documentary, Sylvie, keeper of the family archives and its secrets, delves into the past and uncovers a trove of writing, films, and photos that her family has ignored for decades. What she finds is a moving testimony to a relationship that transcended the Holocaust itself. This is a documentary worth viewing and if you cannot make it to the DGA on July 21, consider watching the film online through Outfest Virtual, streaming as of July 22, 8:00 AM.
Sylvie, with the support of her husband Christian, decides to finally open up the suitcases stashed away in the attic of their farmhouse in Northern France. She first finds the typed transcript of her grandmother’s account of her time in several Nazi concentration camps during World War II. Prior to World War II, Nelly Mousset-Vos was an operatic mezzo-soprano who frequently appeared on stage in n Paris, Milan, Zurich and London. She was married and had two young daughters who lived with her in Brussels. Returning to Paris from a musical performance in Milan, she was arrested by the German occupation authorities and sent to Kreuzberg Prison in Autumn of 1944. She used her musical abilities to get the occasional advantage, such as some vegetables from a sentimental guard and then later moved to Ravenbrück concentration camp for women near Berlin.
In her memoir, Nelly was ordered to sing Christmas carols on Christmas Eve. When a voice called out “Sing something from Madame Butterfly!” Hauntingly, the singer chooses “Un bel di vedremo” – the ultimate expression of longing and hope. Immediately afterward, she was kissed by another inmate – Nadine Hwang, a Chinese woman with an oddly androgynous Eurasian face who was there after her arrest in Paris. So began the long-hidden, extraordinary love story of two prisoners from the French Resistance: Nelly Mousset-Vos and Nadine Hwang, the opera-loving requester.
From the bowels of Ravenbrück concentration camp, their relationship blossomed and transformed into a deepening love that sustained them through liberation of the camps and post-war separation, where they finally found each other several years later and move to Caracas, Venezuela, where, far from the world they left behind, they begin to build a life together. Although Nelly and Nadine were together briefly at Ravenbrück, Nelly found herself transferred in a boxcar crammed with 80 people to the terrifying Nazi concentration camp of Mauthausen (“the antechamber of hell”) in Austria, where she figured that she would probably not survive or ever see Nadine again. Nadine remained at Ravenbrück which was liberated on April 22, 1945 and, after a brief period of recovery in Sweden, she returned to Paris. The film opens with a very clear image of Nadine in the striped prison outfit at the time of her arrival at Malmö Harbor in Sweden after being set free from Ravenbrück.
Unbeknownst to Nadine, Nelly was liberated from Mauthaussen in April 1945, but Nelly had no contact with Nadine at that time, not knowing if she was alive or dead. When the Allies arrived at Mauthausen, she was one of the survivors and was taken to Malmö Harbor in Sweden. Eventually, she ended up back in Brussels, Belgium, where she had left her two young daughters Sylvie and Anne with friends. We don’t learn exactly how Nadine got back in touch with Nelly, but they were reunited in 1946 or 1947. This is only the beginning of the story of Nelly and Nadine. Later in the film, we learn why each of them were arrested and sent by the Nazis to concentration camps: Nelly Mousset-Vos was a spy working with the French Resistance against Nazi Deutschland and Nadine Hwang brought help refugees cross over the border in the Pyrenees into Spain and safety. This is only part of the story of Nelly and Nadine, two survivors of the Nazi concentration camps.
Sylvie knew her grandmother Nelly briefly, and she inherited her journals and home movies after her death in 1987, and is now the unofficial keeper of her legacy. Until recently, it never occurred to Sylvie that Nelly and Nadine were lesbian lovers. It seems that after Nadine’s death in 1982, Nelly moved back to Brussels and frequently visited her granddaughters when they were little. Nelly’s granddaughter Sylvie slowly unveils her grandmother’s surprising story in a collection of revealing images. The photographs, Super 8 footage and audio recordings as well as the poignant diary entries, recall her grandmother’s lesbian love affair with fellow concentration camp inmate Nadine. Like many relationships back in the day the explicit nature of their love was glossed over by the rest of the family and even close friends. But it soon becomes clear that it was far more than just a friendship.
In his 2015 documentary film Every Face Has a Name, director Magnus Gertten attempted to track down some of the WWII survivors present in a 1945 newsreel from Malmö harbor, Sweden’s gateway to continental Europe. He got hold of a handful, who in turn provided names to others in the footage. According to Gertten: “It all started out of curiosity. I came across this archive film, a newsreel, which was shot in my hometown Malmö in April 1945. I never intended to make a documentary about this historic event, but I became fascinated by the cinematic quality of the archive film and the anonymous faces of camp survivors taking their first steps in freedom. Among the Polish Jews and French resistance, an oddly androgynous Eurasian face made a lasting impression during her two seconds on screen. Identified as Nadine Hwang, she was given the following caption: ‘Belonged to an artistic community in Paris. Left for China in 1945 and disappeared without a trace.’” But Nadine’s story turns out to be quite different, as Gertten soon discovered while working on Nelly & Nadine.
Previously Gertten had made an earlier film Harbour of Hope (2011) about the arrival of 1,948 concentration camp prisoners, mostly women and children, at Malmö Harbor in Sweden in April 1945, using the original footage shot at the time with the goal of indenting the persons in the film. It just so happened that Sylvia Bianchi was in Paris at the premiere of that film and came up to Gertten, informing him that Nadine Hwang indeed left a trace. In fact, that trace was the partner of Nelly, Sylvie’s grandmother. To boot, Sylvie’s attic roomed a large crate of writings, diaries and even super-8 films, all inherited from Nelly and not yet touched by the still somewhat weary granddaughter. In Nelly & Nadine, it all gets unpacked and unrolled into a remarkable account, both historical and deeply personal.
Gertten remained fascinated with Nadine Hwang, who he eventually discovered was the daughter of the Chinese Ambassador to Spain and part of Natalie Clifford Barney’s famous literary salon in Paris during the 1930s where we served as Natalie’s secretary and chauffeur as well as being a lesbian lover. Gertten knew a bit about Nadine but the missing part of the part was that of Nelly. It is Sylvia Bianchi, Nelly’s granddaughter, who opened up the treasure-trove of notebooks, diaries, photographs, super-8 films, and vinyl recordings that fill in the story.
In Nelly & Nadine, Gertten has managed to assemble this exceptional discovery, moving back and forth between today and various yester years, into a work of truth that surely surpasses fiction. Stepping back from the narrator’s chair, he hands wisely turns over the scene to Sylvie herself, who becomes an organic guide through this secret chronicle of a handsome female couple and their lives.
Nelly & Nadine was given the Teddy Jury Award at the Berlin Film Festival 2022. It has screened at a number of international film festivals including Tribeca and Frameline in San Francisco.
